


Witness

by HolmesianDeduction



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Eye Trauma, Forced to Watch, Gen, Mild Gore, Spoilers for MAG-154, Spoilers for MAG-155, Voyeurism, tentative friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29031003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: When Jon asked Melanie if there was anything he could do to help with her 'escape' from the Archives, he hadn't expected her to take him of all people up on the offer.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Melanie King
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Witness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sootsprites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootsprites/gifts).



> The graphic violence isn't particularly extreme in my opinion, but figured I'd rather be safe than sorry on this one.

He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be watching this. He knows this with the certainty of instinct he didn’t realise he had.

Truth be told, when he had asked if she needed any help, he had expected her to say no, or to say nothing at all, or maybe to even lash out one last time. Certainly when she stared at him – through him really, he had begun to feel a twisting in his guts, but instead she had eventually closed her eyes and asked him to stay with her while she did it.

He had nodded, had stood up, but she knew without knowing what he was thinking.

“I want to make sure that _he_ ,” she paused, scrunched her nose, “that _it_ sees what I’m doing.”

_And I don’t want to be alone with that._ That part – left deliberately unspoken – pushed its way into the back of his mind, and he had willed himself not to let it show on his face.

As she’d led him upstairs and through the stacks to one of the more secluded workrooms, he wondered idly how long she had been planning – how soon after he’d told her she had made the decision – and he felt the faintest tickling of the answers at the edges of his consciousness, like the nearly undetectable traces of light from a door only just beginning to open. He slammed it closed, eyes squeezed shut and jaw locked against the knowledge.

“Jon?”

Melanie’s voice had been like a jolt of electricity, and he’d opened his eyes to see his face reflecting back at him as she watched him warily, as if he were a temporarily calmed, but still dangerous wild animal. It was a way he’d become accustomed to being watched since he’d woken up, but in the moment, he’d felt a pang of…of not _hurt_ exactly – disappointment maybe? – but in what? That she trusted him enough to draw him into this, but not enough to look at him any other way?

He’d dropped his gaze and shrugged it off.

“This the spot?”

She’d shrugged. “It’s as good as any.” A beat. “I’ve had some screaming sessions in here. No one comes to check.”

“That’s…concerning.”

“Seems about right for this place.”

He couldn’t argue that and had followed her into the room, closing it behind him as quietly as he could.

“Are you sure you want to do it like this? We could keep looking for another way. Something that’s not,” he’d paused briefly, watching her pull a pair of sharpened book repair awls from her bag, “not _this_.”

“ _Jon_.” There was the old anger again, flaring hot just underneath the surface of her words. “Don’t try to talk me out of this.”

“I’m not.” He’d dropped his eyes again – it had become almost reflex on his part, like showing your open palms to an agitated cop. “If I was going to try and stop you, why would I have told you in the first place?”

Melanie exhaled hard through her nose, letting the silence drag on between them as she continued unpacking her bag; first the awls – he’d known without asking that she’d boiled them in the kettle – then a dirty old towel ( _for the blood_ ). Looking down at the awls, she’d made a face. “Here’s hoping I don’t shove these too far and off myself. Should’ve probably checked how far I could go.”

“Not sure it’s easy to keep track of centimetres when you’re gouging your eyes out.” Jon offered a weak smile, trying hard to hide the tremor he was so certain was shaking his entire body.

She jerked her head up, then bit off whatever she had intended to say almost immediately. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, well –”

“No, I mean more than usual.”

“ _Thanks._ ” His voice was dryer than he’d intended, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t _know_ how he looked, and _oh god he shouldn’t be here_.

She sighed. “No. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Oh.” He licked his lips absently, then sighed. “It doesn’t want me to help you with this. It didn’t even want me to _know_ this could be done.”

Melanie’s eyebrows raised. “What does it want you to do then? Stop me?”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

“Are you going to?”

He laughed, all too aware of how threadbare – borderline hysterical, really – he sounded, but shook his head. “No.” Then, before the silence could set back in, “I…I could help.”

“What do you mean?” He scanned Melanie’s face for suspicion, but found only curiosity and scepticism – the latter, at least, he had expected.

“I could tell you when to stop.”

“When to st– _oh_ ,” her eyes darted ( _involuntarily_ ) towards the awls on the table. “You can do that?”

“I should be able to, uh…see…it – when you’ve gone far enough, I mean.”

“Ah. Right. Yeah, that might be good.” Melanie swallowed just a little louder than she meant to and glanced back up. “You got your phone ready? Might be good to be able to call as soon as possible after.”

“Already on speed dial.” He placed the scuffed faux-leather case on the table and flipped it open to show the phone’s screen. They were only stalling at this point, and they both knew it, and the words left his lips before he could process them – before he could stop them. “Are you scared?”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed as her lips started to form words, then stopped. “Shut up Jon.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

There was a long pause, and he braced himself for what was to come, but instead there was the huff of breath. “I know. You can’t help it. It’s just your nature now – whatever the fuck that is.”

He blinked. “I…yeah. Something like that, I guess.”

She picked up the awls, turning them over in her hands. “Not sure how I’m going to get these in there – can’t even get my finger near them to wear contacts.”

“Could close your eyes I guess,” she frowned and he shrugged, “might be easier if you can’t see what’s coming?”

“Hasn’t helped so far, but sure.” He started to reply, but she held up a hand. “I’m joking. Now come on. We’re just wasting time now.”

“Right.” He sat down opposite her, watching without watching her take the leather wristband from around her wrist. “Does that actually help?”

She shrugged. “Not exactly tried it before, but it’s worth a shot.” He made a quiet noise of assent, and she placed it between her teeth, biting down experimentally then making a face. “Well…it tastes terrible but at least I won’t chip a tooth, I guess.”

He let his eyes flit back up to her face, absorbing every detail without meaning to, the dark streaks in her already dark brown irises searing themselves into his memory banks, the tiny amber ring around just inside the black outer ring glaring like the corona of an eclipsed sun. He tried to tear his eyes away, the huff of breath shakier than he wanted it to be as he impulsively reached out, stabilising her shaking hands with his own, forcing himself not to recoil as his fingers curled around a precise point along the cold steel shaft of the awl. “When,” he paused at the rasp of his own voice – it was an effort to speak suddenly, as though he had to fight his own body to get the words out. “When you feel my hands, stop.”

“And you’ll watch?”

“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

She laughed – more shakily than she wanted, he knew – and forced a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true.” She took another deep breath, Jon’s own lungs inflating alongside hers. “Right. Let’s do this.”

It took a strength he didn’t know he had to force his hands to stay put – it would be so easy, something in the back of his mind whispered, to change the course by angling the points away from their destinations – and he felt the muscles of his fingers cramping as they clenched around the narrow shafts.

The wet _pop_ – like incisors piercing the taut skin of an overripe grape – was something that he was – prepared seemed too strong a word, but he had heard the sound in his head repeatedly since he had first listened to the tape, so he had expected it. What he wasn’t prepared for was the jolt of pain that shot through his temples and the sudden blurriness at the edges of his vision. A ripple of nausea hit him with the drip of viscous fluid on his hand and the muffled scream that forced its way from Melanie’s throat only to break like a wave upon the leather between her teeth.

It was an eternity – time having long since lost all meaning in the blur of pain and heat and the drip of aqueous, then vitreous humours – before he felt the sticky heat of Melanie’s cheekbone, and realised with some horror, that she was attempting to press down.

“ _Melanie_.” His voice was a hoarse hiss, and he swallowed hard in a feeble attempt to ease the dryness in his mouth. “Melanie _stop_.” A sob rattled through her body and into his hands, and he couldn’t tell if it was blood, tears, or something else touching his hands – again the answer plucked at the corner of his mind, and he forced it down again. “Melanie you have to pull off, you have to take them out.”

There was another sob and a muffled noise around the leather still clenched in her teeth.

“You have to.” It didn’t occur to him until much later that he hadn’t immediately known what she was saying, and again, gentle as he could, “Melanie _please_ , you have to take them out.”

The silence – punctuated by heavy breathing – was unbearable, but finally, with a rattle of breath, Melanie began to move again, Jon’s eyes open just enough to judge when she was clear of the awls and yank them away, the wooden handles clattering on the floor as he reached for his phone.

It was only then, as he fumbled with the lockscreen that he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and at the thin rivulets of blood streaming from his tear ducts, his nose, the corner of his mouth, and pressed the call button.

He vaguely heard the sound of the operator in his ear, and when he spoke, he only knew his voice was his own by the pain in his throat. “Yes, this is Jonathan Sims calling from the Magnus Institute, there’s…there’s been an accident.”

“Sir do you need an ambulance?” The voice sounded as though it was in another world, and it was with great effort that he responded in the affirmative before the phone slipped from his grip and he blacked out.

When he came to, it was in a hospital bed with Basira standing over him, her lips pressed in a tight line. She said nothing, only left the room and returned with an officer who took his statement and didn’t believe a word of it. He didn’t try to convince him – there would be no follow-up anyway. As he’d left the hospital, he’d looked briefly towards the room he was sure housed Melanie, but was pulled away by Basira who had shaken her head, but refused to look at him during the drive back to the Institute.

Several times during the day, he tried to _see_ Melanie, to figure out how she was doing, but to no avail, his powers probing the dark cavity left behind like a tongue testing the empty socket left behind by a pulled tooth. She was gone – as if she had never been there to begin with, and after hours of trying, he was left only with a dull ache behind his eyes and the rawness in his throat from where he had – without realising – screamed earlier in the day.

As he locked the door to his flat and fell into bed, he wondered if Elias had felt it too – if he too felt the strange sensation of having had some part of himself amputated, and he found that he hoped he did.


End file.
